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Showing 5537–5552 of 9481 results
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Platinum Blues
$19.95In this “fast-paced, wickedly funny” legal thriller, a small-town lawyer’s case against a Los Angeles record label turns into a deadly media circus (Publishers Weekly)
Living in the Northern California town of Foolsgold, widowed lawyer Oliver Gulliver is headed for a midlife crisis. It doesn’t help that his eighteen-year-old daughter Elora has fallen in love with alcoholic former rock star C.C. Gilley. But then C.C. quits drinking and gets to work on a comeback album. Things actually seem to be looking up — until C.C.’s car is stolen, with his priceless demo tape inside.
In no time at all, another band is all over the radio with C.C.’s song, and Oliver finds himself in Los Angeles working the biggest case of his life — suing a billion-dollar record company for plagiarism. But even as Oliver discovers his talent for charming the public, he finds out how nasty the music industry can get. When the stakes skyrocket from plagiarism to murder, Oliver will have to try C.C.’s case like his life depends on it — because it does.
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Plato as Artist
$25.95“The purpose of this essay,” writes Jan Zwicky in her introduction, “is not to adumbrate a new theory about Plato, nor to develop a new approach. Plato is old; he is famous; my Greek is sketchythere is nothing revelatory I am competent to say. And yet I wish to say something; in particular, I wish to say something about his dialogue Meno. Years ago, I became convinced that it was as close to a philosophical jewel as anything was likely to get. It sparkled; it had, I sensed, a kind of geometrical perfection that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I turned to the commentators, and learned much. But I also learned that no one was quite as impressed with the dialogue as I. Many thought it significant, some thought it central, but none, it seemed, was convinced it was a work of philosophic arta complex ecology of argumentation, a survey of Plato’s central views in very small compass, an exquisitely nuanced report of both his idealism and his despair. And like other works of art, provocative, ambiguous, tantalizing. The purpose of this essay, then, is simply that: to record my astonishment at the beauty of this made thing; to praise; to express my delight and wonder, and my gratitude; to attempt to clarify, for myself, what continues to perplex me, and perhaps must, now that there is no one who speaks Plato’s Greek as fluently as he.”
Plato’s Meno begins with the question of whether virtue is teachable. Meno is an aristocrat, a visitor to Athens, and, as it turns out, not a quick study. Zwicky examines the dialogue in terms of the progression of an argument, and as a dramatic work. For as a philosophical exercise the Meno dialogue has often been thought to be entirely inconclusive. Taking under consideration the dialogue’s dramatic elements, the asides, the dynamic between Meno and Socrates, and Socrates’ rhetorical technique as he leads the discussion from virtue to innate knowledge and learned knowledge, we are encouraged to read for the insight it can provide into Plato’s presentation of Socrates and into argument as art.
Translating key turning points in the dialogue into contemporary language with corresponding stage directions, Zwicky draws out some of what makes the philosophy tick when we approach it as drama, exposing some of the seams of Socrates’ rhetorical technique. By stepping outside of what goes on in the dialogue and asking also why it goes on, we approach a wider plane of possible meaning.
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Play
$23.00You will talk about 2016.
You will talk about The Lighted City.
You will be brave and truthful.
You will get to the bottom of what happened.Paul (Paulina) Hayes loves her cousin Adrian. Inseparable from a young age, they play The Lighted City, an imaginary world where they pretend to live together and can escape a childhood that seems both too sad and too grown-up. But The Lighted City isn’t without danger.
Years later, Paul is struggling with PTSD after a season of turmoil—one in which Adrian is dead, and radio and television are filled with reports of missing children. Just as stability is settling into her life and relationships, Paul is dragged back into the fate that Adrian seems to have scripted for them. And so she finds herself journeying across the country, down into a ravine, and back to The Lighted City, where so much of her childhood played out. Only by doing so can she begin to come to terms with “the day everything happened”—and what has unfolded since then.
With a unique blend of contemporary storytelling and psychological fiction, Play is a haunting, riveting novel that reminds us of both the beauty and danger of imagination.
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Play It Right
$36.95A real-life underdog tale of one man turning the tables on the casinos and Wall Street without selling his soul to the devil
All around the world, the words “Wall Street” conjure up a powerful image. For some, it is the center of America’s capitalist system and the engine of its economic growth. For others, it is the home of rapacious bankers and reckless traders whose greed would lead to a global financial crisis. For an Indian-born blackjack player, Wall Street represented something else entirely — a chance for him to play in the largest casino in the world.
Kamal Gupta’s improbable journey, from a wide-eyed Indian immigrant to an ultimate insider in the rarefied world of investment banks and hedge funds, is a uniquely American story. Nowhere else would it have been possible for a scrawny computer scientist to enter the world of high finance solely on the basis of his gambling abilities. After spending seven years creating an investment methodology, Gupta went on an incredible run, generating an unprecedented 103 consecutive months of positive returns while managing money at large hedge funds. His success did not go unnoticed, and he found himself under constant pressure to take bigger risks to make even more money. He refused and always played it right, knowing that there was such a thing as “enough” money, something very few, if any, of his Wall Street peers understood.
Much like Maria Konnikova’s bestseller, The Biggest Bluff, Play It Right isn’t so much about money as it is about the human condition and beating the odds, whether at a casino, on Wall Street, or in life itself.
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Play Out the Match
$16.95Play Out the Match, Michael Knox’s first published collection of poetry, is also an extended meditation on the idea of reconciliation. Vivid and lyrical, the poems make use of various voices, speakers, and landscapes to explore the surreptitious aspects of fear and indifference, tenderness and fragility. In Play Out the Match, dollar store cashiers, Scottish pub brawlers, lovers, and cowards create a broad and sympathetic world of otherness. Shifting viewpoints and lexicons weave across a wide variety of experience and emotion, producing a poetry that is cinematic in its imagery but lucid and accessible in content. In achingly human narratives, Knox examines the finer lines between love and indifference, meaning and loss.
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PLAY: Dramaturgies of Participation
$34.95From escape rooms to TikTok to Tim Hortons’s “Roll Up the Rim to Win” to DIY everything, participatory performance is ingrained in the very fabric of our contemporary society. Written in a series of alphabetical, standalone mini essays that activate the reader as a participant who chooses their own path, PLAY: Dramaturgies of Participation collects, describes, and analyzes live performances in which the audience become participants in the piece itself.
Jenn Stephenson and Mariah Horner explore the parallels between participatory theatre and the interactive phenomenon where the passive consumer is now engaging with their content. In a world where participation is key to our social interaction, Stephenson and Horner find a unique approach to understanding our relationship with theatre, and by extension, each other.
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Players
$18.95Finalist: 2017 Gerald Lampert Award
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Playing Bare
$16.95Witty, prickly and fresh, Playing Bare is a mordant satire on the relation between theatre and life. An accomplished actress is on the verge of a nervous breakdown as she directs Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. In her deranged effort to expose the emptiness of playing fictional characters, she casts the lead roles with a pair of non-actors whose lives mirror those of the characters they play. Her search for the ultimate theatrical experience—life becoming art—takes the action in hilarious and insightful directions.
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Playing Dead
$18.95Playing Dead: A Contemplation Concerning the Arctic, by two-time Governor General’s Award-winner Rudy Wiebe, is the first book in NeWest’s Landmark Editions Series. First released in 1989, this collection won the Alberta Culture Non- Fiction Award.These essays take a critical look at the history, mystery, and spirituality of a region that Wiebe would have us see as a vital aspect of our Canadianism, one we ignore at the peril of our nationhood.
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Playing God
$10.95Writer Richard Kelly Kemick humorously tracks his growing obsession with Christmas villages in this short essay that also acts as a holiday card. Playing God originally appeared in the collection Decadence, and as a limited chapbook—both published by Biblioasis.
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Playing Hard
$24.95Playing Hard is a tribute to the power of play in all its forms — a searching personal account of how play, games, and sports sanctify life and give it meaning. In this moving and wide-ranging examination, Peter Unwin reflects on life and relationships through the countless acts of play and the many unexpected places it is found.
Through a shared love of games, the author reconnects with his terminally ill father and is exposed to the complexities of his father’s past, of his experience of war and violence, and of a different but equally powerful commitment to the life of play.
From Snakes-n-Ladders to shooting pool, to an improbable soccer game in the Sahara, to first memories of playing baseball under catalpa trees — Peter Unwin examines the irresistible urge to have fun, reminding us that to live is to play, and to play hard is to live well.
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Playing the Inside Out / Le jeu des apparences
$14.95Playing the Inside Out is David Adams Richard’s distilled insight on the artist’s struggle for full access to artistic integrity by remaining an outsider to convention. Richards conjures forth his vision of eternal truths commonly held by all mankind, a Miramichi cosmic consciousness that he has been working at all his life. In an entertaining, remonstrating, and ultimately uplifting essay he identifies how conformity and laziness poison artists, and the great pressures that exist for writers to “join the herd.” No one can possibly read this essay and not find comments or conclusions that directly relate to them. The writer’s challenge to find and protect one’s inner honesty is deeply familiar to anyone seeking to be faithful to the true sense of “I” that dominates motivation and judgement. So personal are the truths that Richards lays out, that anyone who reads will feel Richards’ passion and find value in his practical wisdom and encouragement. Playing the Inside Out is shrewd analysis; a personal advisory directed at artists and writers in particular. But Richards’ topic and manner of address are egalitarian. He is telling us to be who we are — honestly, consistently, and with heart.
Depuis plus de trente ans, l’écrivain David Adams Richards puise dans l’expérience de la marginalité de la Miramichi pour approfondir l’intérieur de l’être humain, là où de loge le vrai. Dans cet essai, Richards dépeint le rapport de résistance créative qu’il entretient avec l’altérité stigmatisant qui menace l’authenticité et exprime son appétence d’aller au-delà des apparences. L’approche sociale et existentielle qu’il adopte dans son parcours littéraire et personnel privilégie la révélation d’un vrai possible, qu’il incarne assurément lui-même en tant qu’écrivain. Tel qu’il le fait dans son essai et à l’instar de ses romans, David Adams Richards contredit, déplace et transforme le discours hégémonique pour privilégier le vrai. L’écrivain nous raconte des histoires qui se déroulent dans un endroit qui devient seul lieu et tout lieu. L’esthétique du récit assume l’authenticité que possède une valeur d’expansion permettant d’accéder à des lois plus puissantes. La démarche de Richards s’inscrit humblement dans une tentative de sonder une réalité plus proche de l’être fondamental, voire universelle, au-delà des apparences.
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Playing the White Man’s Games
$24.95Playing the White Man’s Games tells the extraordinary tales of Native American athletes who overcame tremendous obstacles to dominate the NFL, CFL, PGA, Olympic Games, NHL and professional wrestling. From ABC’s “Athlete of the Century” Jim Thorpe, whose track and field career began when he surpassed his college varsity high jump team in street shoes and climaxed with gold medals in the decathlon and pentathlon at the 1912 Olympic Games, before moving on to dominate NCAA and NFL football, major league baseball and 22 sports in all, including a national championship in ballroom dancing. To Billy Mills, who improved his best time by an unheard of 50 seconds to win the 10,000-metre Olympic race in “the greatest upset in Olympic history.” And Notah Begay III, a product of public courses and Navajo code talkers who won four PGA tournaments in his first two years on the pro golf tour. Sometimes referred to as the “forgotten American”, the fascinating stories of these colourful characters will make you recall Native American heroes with wonder and awe, not only for their exploits on the field of play, but for their efforts to preserve and enhance native history, culture and lifestyle with pride and dignity away from the competition.
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Playing with the Big Boys
$17.95How to crack the seemingly closed brotherhood of poker. Men do it. Boys do it. Even brothers and cousins and fathers do it. But for many women, it remains a mystery, a closed brotherhood of codes.
Much has been written about poker, but this is the first book that focuses on the needs of women. This is a book for women, by women, who want to claim their seat at the poker table — and win!
The information in Playing with the Big Boys comes in an easy-to-follow, lively, and practical presentation. Everything from the origins and basics of the game, to the variations, to strategies, and to the ways women can participate in tournaments is included. Readers will be led through the chapters by “Laura,” our card-shark heroine: How did Laura get started? How did she become her local winner? What advice can she give to other women for their home games or for possible casino ventures? And how can women contend with husbands, boyfriends, Big Boys — and take their money?
Beyond the fundamentals of 5- and 7-card stud, blackjack, draw games, and Texas hold ’em, the authors investigate the unusual variants such as Chicago, Indian Poker, baseball, lowball, hi-lo, and Anaconda. Betting receives equal treatment, and Laura gets to the heart of “when to hold them, and when to fold them.” Bluffing gets its own separate treatment, as does the problem of how to manage a losing streak — or a winning streak. And all told from a woman to other women.
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Playlist
$20.00Playlist: a Profligacy of Your Least-Expected Poems documents the life and practice of a writer who grew up in a musical household, spent his early adult years as a touring musician and his later years programming nightclubs, hotels, galleries and festivals. Modelled after the American folk music revival songbooks of the 1950s and 60s, Playlist fiddles with a two-part writing system that begins with the songbooks’ contextual introductions and ends with the songs – or in this instance, poems – to which they refer. In Playlist, introductions can act less as supporting words than as discrete stories, while the poems they are in service of can appear indifferent to story, sentiment and a writer who, in claiming to contextualize them, can only reduce them further.
The approach championed here is derived from Angela Carter’s writings on burlesque – the exaggeration in this instance born from binaries our progressive liberal culture claims to deplore but, often whimsically, deploys on its social media platforms, too often without regard for consequence. Though these poems aren’t expressly critical, their formal method of construction qualifies them as that subgenre of poetry known as the protest poem.
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Playthings
$19.95A hallucinatory, fragmentary, and tragic fictional telling of one of the most famous psychotherapy cases in history, Alex Pheby’s Playthings offers a visceral and darkly comic portrait of paranoid schizophrenia. Based on the true story of nineteenth-century German judge Daniel Paul Schreber, Playthings artfully shows the disorienting human tragedy of Schreber’s psychosis, in vertiginous prose that blurs the lines between madness and sanity.